justitia, veritas, pax: a collection
by lineduae
Summary: Ficlets, one shots, and fun little things set in the justitia, veritas, pax universe. I anticipate lots of Foggy/Karen/Matt/Pax friendship (and more) with some sexy fluff, some pining, a good amount of angst, a few beloved fic tropes, and daily life stuff. Rating will change.
1. twelve thousand

Note: This series of one-shots and ficlets takes place in the universe of my fic, _justitia, veritas, pax,_ which you can find on my profile. This first fic is set between chapter three and four.

* * *

 **twelve thousand**

* * *

As it turns out, the neighbourhood laundromat/dry-cleaners was not the place of character and community culture that Foggy made it out to be (he did tend to romanticize). There was a selection of fifty cent paperbacks, water stained ceiling tiles, and in the corner there were two elderly men arguing in Punjabi, but overall the experience was lacking.

A frowning, heavyset woman sat behind the counter but didn't look up from her smartphone when Pax walked by with her laundry. Pax chose the machine in the most strategically sound location (keep the door in view, find an escape route, scan for threats, remain vigilant) and pulled some coins from her jeans pocket.

She was counting out coinage when a thought jumped out at her. She wasn't trying to listen, so something in her instinctively picked it out from the background noise of her mind, the constant low murmur of the thoughts of the people around her.

 _Give me all the cash you got, someone thought, and no one gets hurt._

Pax's head jerked up, and a second later the bells above the door tinkled. Time seemed to slow for Pax as she spun, locking onto the source of the thoughts as she did.

 _Johnny said this place is a front for the Yakuza,_ he reassured himself, his inner self in roiling turmoil, _They're going to have a shit ton of cash here don't panic shit don't panic just, just say Give me all the drug money and no one gets hurt._

PRISM trained Pax well. She was able to assess the threat in two seconds- a boy, fourteen or fifteen, sweat beading on the unlined skin of his forehead and sticking his curly hair to the back of his neck. He looked too angry and too desperate. Fear spread outward from him like black ink through seawater, muddying everything. In his jacket pocket was a revolver and his hand was wrapped around the grip. Loaded? She couldn't tell. Pax shut out the boy's fear and jumped into action.

The boy was so focused on the woman behind the counter that he never saw Pax coming. She came up behind him and grabbed him, one hand over his mouth and the other snaking into his pocket, breaking his grip on the gun as she pulled him between two rows of plastic-covered clothing.

 _Be quiet and don't run,_ she thought fiercely at him. When she let him break away he collapsed against the wall, gasping soundlessly and his legs trembling with the desire to run. The woman at the counter didn't look up from Candy Crush.

 _Damn_ , Pax thought. That telepathic command had been a little more forceful than she'd intended.

 _Holy fuck,_ the boy thought, as news footage from the Battle of New York flashed through his mind, _holy fuck it's a mutie freak, she's talking in my head, I tried to rob the only laundromat in New York with an off-duty fuckin superhero inside, I am so dead._

"I'm not a superhero," Pax whispered as she checked the barrel of the pistol, "And you're no criminal. You're just a scared boy." The barrel was empty. Pax used the sleeve of the Columbia University hoodie she's borrowed from Foggy to wipe the gun all over, then she stuffed it into the hoodie pocket.

 _Why were you trying to steal the drug money?_ Pax asked the boy, her telepathic voice smooth and persuasive. _Tell me the truth._

Still unable to talk yet, he just shut his eyes and thought at her as hard as he could. Pax's eyes slid unfocused for a second as she took in the rush of memories, flickering images, emotions. With this with new understanding Pax released the boy from her hold and told him to leave and meet her at a certain park nearby later. He was so unnerved that she needed to use only the barest brush of her telepathy to convince him. The boy left the laundromat considerably shakier and less armed than when he entered.

* * *

A couple of hours and a sci-fi paperback later, Pax was done with her laundry, having folded her clothes into precise, wrinkle-free little rectangles before packing them up. When she finished the place was nearly empty, just the woman behind the counter and one other patron reading nearby. They were both tired to begin with, so Pax was able to make them sleep with ease. The woman with the book leaned forward until her face pressed against the pages, and the Laundromat employee slumped over the counter and began to snore.

Pax walked through the door that said "employees only" and came out into a long stockroom hazy with cigarette smoke. A man with a gun in a shoulder holster guarded the door at the end of the room, sitting on a chair and reading a Harlequin romance. He stood when she entered, barking for her to get out. His energy was slick, dirty cruelty, his thoughts all violence and hate. He reached for his gun. Pax narrowed her eyes and triggered a cluster headache just behind his left eye. The man with the gun dropped to the floor, gripping his head and screaming soundlessly with the pain. Pax stepped over him and opened the second door.

There it was- a notable quantity of street quality Horse, and an old safe, the door hanging open. A motion-activated camera whirred to life as she stepped into the room. Pax struck out with her telekinesis so quickly and thoroughly (the camera exploding in a shower of plastic and electronic parts) that Pax was confident that she'd cut the feed off before it could record anything. Then she got to work, moving stacks of bills from the safe to her bag of laundry. As she was exiting the back room she looked down at the guard writhing in pain and took mercy. She performed the telepathic equivalence of knocking someone unconscious with the butt of a gun, and then she left.

She went back to Foggy's apartment first, to put her clothes away and find a temporary hiding place for the gun. Then she took an old shoe box she'd seen under Foggy's bathroom sink and put the money inside, counting as she worked. Before she left the apartment she wrote a note and put it on the kitchen table, in case Foggy came home early and wondered where she was.

When she arrived at the park the boy was there, sitting on a bench, his shoulders and knees all gangly and his body language one big projection of disrespect and apathy. Pax knew the truth, though. When she sat beside him hope eclipsed the anxiety in his chest. She kept her face a smooth mask as she passed over the box.

"It's a little more than twelve thousand. I hope it's enough," Pax said carefully.

The box shook in the boy's hands. He was biting the inside of his mouth to keep his lips from trembling and blinking away the moisture in his eyes. Pax saw who he was thinking of, a girl with brown eyes and a head of wild, bouncy curls, jumping on a hospital bed, laughing so her missing teeth showed. Pax was stunned by the boy's memory, at the depth of his love.

"You're alright, for a cape."

"I'm not a superhero," Pax said, "I have a friend who is, though."

The boy rubbed the back of hand across his cheeks and stood up.

"I better get this to my brother. I don't want to get jumped with this much on me," the boy laughed harshly.

"Yes," Pax said. He didn't say thank you before he jogged off across the grass, but Pax didn't need him to. She knew how he felt anyway.

* * *

"How did the great laundry adventure go?" Foggy asked her later, when he was home from work and they were sitting on the living room floor eating Pho with ceramic spoons.

Pax chewed and swallowed, considering.

"It went better than I expected it would." She finally said.

"Yeah, laundry is a pain. I wish my mom was still doing mine." Foggy laughed, and Pax laughed too. It felt good.

* * *

In this ficlet I wanted to give the audience an idea about Pax's as-of-yet underdeveloped ideas of morality, right/wrong, etc.. Also it's fun to look at what she gets up to when Foggy and Matt are at work, as she tries to learn how to be a real person (living weapons do not do laundry.)

Thanks for reading.


	2. safe, sound

safe, sound

* * *

Matt knew that it was wrong as sin to watch Pax sleep.

That was the kind of behaviour that Karen would call creepy, that Foggy would call a red flag.

But he wasn't exactly watching, either. Not seeing, not with his eyes. He wasn't even in the same room as the telepath. If he could see, though, all he would have to do is sit up and he'd have a line of sight from the open doorway of his bedroom into the living room, where Pax was sleeping bundled in spare blankets on his sofa.

She was lying on her side with her legs tucked up and one arm cradled against her chest. Her other arm hung off the side of the sofa, hand open and fingers curled. Her lips were parted, her lashes brushed against her cheek, and Matt envied the way she could sleep so deeply. She was the picture of innocence, which made him feel even worse about himself.

But the first night Pax had ever stayed over (actually the second night- but that first night, when she fell asleep at the table, that didn't really count) Matt couldn't sleep.

His shoulder was aching from an overextension and his most recent stitches were tugging at him like spiky little pain fingers when he breathed. The knots in his shoulders had knots, he had the worst tension headache, and he couldn't stop thinking. About his city, about Fisk and the Miracle Workers, about the work to be done, about the people who suffered and the people who profited off of that suffering while he lied there doing nothing. On nights like those the night, the sounds of the Hell's Kitchen was a roar in his head and even his silk sheets felt like too much.

And then he found Pax.

It was her heartbeat first. Like the wingbeats of a moth, small and persistent beneath the roar. It was something to focus on. When he did he found a still pool amongst the raging currents of anxiety, of fear, of pain, of noise and too-much.

It was just Pax. Just her rhythmic breathing; just the way she gave the littlest of moans when she rolled over; just the way her blood rushed under her skin, heat and life; just the way her brows would furrow a little when a siren would go by; just the heady, mouthwatering smell of her; just the whisper of the blanket sliding across her skin and over slightly raised scar tissue, forming a topographical map of her in his mind.

He would focus on her, on this one point in space, on this one living, breathing woman. He would focus on her until she filled up every sense, until his world was the rise and fall of her chest, the beat of her heart, the way her hand reached out for something in her sleep. She would drown out everything else, and then, with his head full of Pax, he could sleep.

Matt knew that it was wrong as sin, but it was so sweet.


	3. fall seven (thousand) times

content warning for discussion of self-harm and violent medical abuse/trauma

* * *

fall seven (thousand) times

* * *

"Hey, Foggy?" Karen asked, and then she was leaning over Foggy's desk. Her long hair was a gold veil framing her face, her eyes were so blue they looked electric, her mouth was red like strawberries. _There is an angel in my office,_ Foggy thought, just a little dazed by her sudden closeness and the smell of her perfume.

Foggy realized that he was waxing poetic in his head again when Karen raised an eyebrow at him.

"Anyone home?" She joked.

"Ah, sorry. Lost in thought." Foggy said with a little shake of his head. He straightened the papers in front of him. "What's up?"

Karen leaned back, running a fingertip absently over the edge of Foggy's desk.

"I was just... I was wondering about Pax."

"About Pax," Foggy repeated. His mouth was already feeling all dry and cottony, the way it got when he had to lie. He hated it.

"About her, um-" Karen raised a finger to point rather unsubtly to the back of her neck.

"Oh! Her scars! Oh. " Foggy said. He rubbed the back of his own neck, thinking. "Well, uh."

"I'm sorry," Karen said, waving her hands in front of her face in a "forget it" gesture.

"I'm so nosey. I was just wondering because, well, I first noticed them on her arms, and I thought, you know, that they were from self harming." Karen said the last two words in an almost-hush, though Matt was the only one in the office. "But then I saw that they go all down her neck too, so I was wondering... And you're cousins so..."

Foggy (who was not exactly a stranger to the press of a blade when things were too much- during the worst times of his high school career, exams in college, when he and Matt were fighting that one awful time) wondered himself.

"Yeah, she, uh, she had a lot of operations."

"Oh, god. When she was a kid?"

"This is really something you should be asking Pax about." Foggy said uncomfortably, leaning back in his chair and pressing his knuckles together.

"You're right," Karen admitted, looking sheepish. "It's just... Well, she can be hard to talk to. Well, it can be hard to get her to talk about herself. "

"Yeah," Foggy said distractedly. "I mean, how well do we really know anyone?"

* * *

Foggy swallowed his mouthful of noodles and leaned forward in his desk chair. Matt noted the way his friend's heartbeat tripped just before he opened his mouth, which let Matt know to brace for an awkward/and or difficult question. "So, what's the deal with Pax's... Her scars."

Matt relaxed his hand so that the noodles he was about to lift into his mouth fell off of his chopsticks and back into the paper takeaway box.

"Her scars." Matt repeated slowly.

"Yeah. On her arms and her back and stuff." Foggy coaxed.

Matt gave Foggy an expression that he hoped conveyed his distaste with the topic at hand.

"Hey, I didn't say- There's nothing wrong with it." Foggy added quickly.

"Of course there isn't," Matt interjected, his tone firm (or, as Foggy liked to say, in his serious-face-lawyer-time tone).

"But Karen and I, we couldn't help but notice, and since you're the person who knows Pax the best I figured you probably know."

"Those people-" Matt dropped his almost-empty takeaway container on Foggy's desk, the muscle in his jaw flexing as he regained composure. "Those people tortured her, Foggy."

"Yeah, I know." Foggy said sadly. "I'm sorry. Forget I asked." Foggy picked at his noodles for a long, quiet minute before he changed the subject, but he didn't stop wondering. Neither did Matt.

* * *

"There you are," Matt said as he stepped into Fogwell's. The door with the peeling and cracked black lettering closed behind him. Except for Pax, the gym was empty. He couldn't hear the whine-buzz of the overhead lights, which meant that Pax was working out in the dark.

"It's sunset," Pax said, "The sun is coming in through the dusty windows like streaks of carmine. The light turns the room into a watercolour piece, all faded pinks and purples."

"Don't read my mind," He said gamely, smiling at the picture she painted for him with her words. It was becoming a habit, to point out when she picked up on his thoughts, even as he grew to care less when she did. He dropped his workout bag by the door.

"Don't think so loud," Pax said, and Matt had to laugh at that. At times it did feel like his thoughts were too loud.

He cast out all his senses, to get a picture of the room. His infrared told him right where Pax was standing, and that she had already warmed up, her limbs glowing with heat and her feet bare. His radar told him the layout of the room, where Pax had positioned the punching bag she was using, that there were some mats laid out nearby and someone had left their gloves hanging on a hook on the back wall. He smelled the faint, musty smell of old sweat, years of it soaked into the mats and bags, the smell of saliva and blood mixed (from a fight earlier), the new cotton wraps around Pax's hands, the salty tears that she'd wiped away as Matt had come in. He heard the way the floorboards groaned under his feet and how her heartbeat steadied as he walked towards her.

"Can I join you? I could use a workout." Matt suggested. He took off his glasses and set them on the edge of the boxing ring.

"No," Pax said, "I want to fight you."

"Fight me?" Matt laughed, the sound harsh in his ears, making him hate himself a little.

"Hand to hand," Pax said. "I won't use my powers."

"Well then it'd hardly be fair, would it?" Matt said cheekily. "I can't exactly turn mine off."

He sensed the determined set to her jaw, the way her pulse beat in her palms and her muscles ached for a fight, for the release of giving or getting a good beating. He knew the feeling.

"Okay," he said, "Okay. If you think you'll be... If you think you're ready."

"I'll never be ready if I never try." A pause. "Nyx used to say that there was nothing like a good ass-kicking to get you back in the game."

"Sometimes it feels like I take more ass-kickings than I give," Matt admitted. He pressed his fingers into the wound on his side, the one from Nobu that took forever to heal, even with his daily meditation and Claire's patient stitching and re-stitching. When it finally did heal it knitted into a thick, angry scar. Some injuries were just like that.

He rolled his neck, stretched his arms above his head and touched his toes, slid down into an almost-split to warm up.

"Now you're showing off," Pax said, sliding into the splits herself.

Once Matt was ready he took his corner on the mats, feeling the vinyl under his feet and the air cooling on his skin. The sun must have finally set. Pax's heartbeat was steady as she got into position and raised her fists in front of her. Matt did the same.

"No head shots, five points?" Matt asked.

"No head shots, pinning win." Pax decided.

Matt hesitated, wet his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. Pax's heart rate sped up a little. She was good, disciplined and capable of controlling herself, but his senses were better. She couldn't hide her fear.

"You won't hurt me." Pax promised.

"You're not afraid?" Matt asked.

"I'm not afraid," Pax agreed, and curiously, she wasn't lying.

He hesitated too long so Pax made the first move. And oh, she was fast- fast and small, striking out so quickly he could barely block her blows. She had him against the corner, which wouldn't do, so he spun and ducked and now he was in the centre of the mat, and she followed, but it was on Matt's terms now.

The slide of wind against his skin as his kicks and punches cut through empty air, never touching her, turned his nerve endings into static. He could feel his lungs expanding with air, his blood vessels constricting, the chambers of his heart beating, his tendons flexing and his muscles contracting. Outside of his body, all his senses worked in tandem to create a fiery, three-dimensional picture, motion and speed. Fighting was a sensory experience on a level above anything else, and his blood sang hot with it.

Pax was good, but she was still weakened from her time in stasis, not in top form. Matt's endurance was better, and he was stronger. He couldn't hit her, but she never got a blow by him either. When she started to wane, her lungs drawing air in short breaths and her muscles burning with the effort, Matt got the upper hand and struck her once in the side.

She spun and attacked wildly, like a cornered animal, an open-handed blow just glancing off his forearm before she spun and aimed her elbow at his throat. He caught her arm and kicked her legs out from under her, and as she was falling she hooked his leg with hers and brought him down with her.

As they dropped to the mat his senses told him how fast they were falling, how to direct the fall, and exactly what to do to cradle her head with his arm to absorb the impact. After they hit the floor he stayed there for some milliseconds, his hand on the back of her neck, their torsos pressed together. It felt like he had two hearts beating in his chest cavity, and everything was warm and soft. The fingertips of his hand under her neck brushed across scars.

It was the tiniest of moments, and then he was sitting up and pulling her with him. She was breathing hard, a light sheen of sweat on her skin, smelling like salt and bitter sadness and sweetness.

"Not bad," He said, a little out of breath himself. He sat down on the mat cross legged and turned his face to her.

"You're a beautiful fighter," Pax said sincerely. "Your upper body form is close to perfect."

Pax sat down beside him, watching as his unseeing eyes followed her, or an approximation of where she was, never focusing. In the increasingly shadowy atmosphere his brown eyes looked darker than dark, like something more and less than they were in the light.

"Can I ask you about something?" He asked gently.

Pax saw the question forming in his mind, knew what he was going to ask. Matt knew that she knew, but she let him ask anyway.

"Your scars." Matt said.

"My scars." Pax repeated flatly.

"You don't have to tell me." Matt said, suddenly regretful. Pax knew that the truth would make him truly regret asking.

"The vertical ones along my spine- the thicker, evenly spaces ones. Those were the first. It was an experimental implantation, the prototype of the neural units that would come later." Once Pax started talking it was like the words were falling out of her mouth, snakes and frogs, like the fairy tale she had read when she was small, and the pain wouldn't be denied.

"They didn't sedate me, they didn't see the need to. They just restrained me. During the operation, the lead surgeon realized that he liked it. I could see into his mind. He liked cutting me. He liked the blood. I was fourteen." Pax ran her own gentle fingers along the inside of her arm. Matt's heart was pounding like he was fighting again.

"It was my punishment, and his reward. It was a strong incentive, but I could never do enough, never do well enough to avoid the scalpel. They would use a new in-tissue tracker every mission, cut it out after, put a new one in. They would take tissue samples constantly, always cutting pieces out of us, trying to make more. The head surgeon, he stopped making excuses to cut me. He had an understanding with the Donnelley's. Eventually-"

"You don't have to say any more," Matt said, soft and hoarse, his voice mingling with the ghosts that gathered in the darkening room.

"Eventually it wasn't enough for him to cut me himself. He would do it, and then he would make me do it."

"Pax," Matt said, like he was in pain himself, and he reached for her. His hand found Pax's wrist, his fingers gripped loosely. She could feel his pounding pulse in the press of his fingertips.

"I killed him," Pax confessed, the words more like hot embers now, burning her on the way out. "It was after my last mission. He had taken out my tracker and he was cutting me, like usual. He did not know that my neural control units had been damaged by the bomb blast, that I had access to my telekinesis. I didn't know, either. Not until it was too late. If he had survived he wouldn't have been able to hurt anyone else ever again... But he didn't. They couldn't get to him in time. I couldn't stop the bleeding. There was too much-"

Memory was choking Pax, long bony fingers from the inside, gripping her throat, making it hard to breathe. The room spun. Her heart was splintering. The ghosts would pull her to pieces.

"Oh God," she gasped, "Don't tell Foggy. Don't let me hurt them. I'm going to-"

Matt's fingers around her wrist gripped tighter, tethered her to earth, pulled her back from the grasp of ghosts. He took her hand in his, and then her other hand too, and turned his upper body so he was facing her.

"You're here," Matt said, like he knew the lure of the dead. "You're here, with me. With me and Foggy and Karen, and Claire, and you're alive. You're safe."

 _But you aren't safe from me,_ Pax thought, closing her eyes.

"You're not going to leave us, are you?" asked Matt.

Pax opened her eyes and raised her gaze to look into Matt's face. He wasn't seeing her, not like she was seeing him, but he saw. He saw the dark.

"No," Pax said softly, giving Matt's hands a squeeze before she pulled hers away. Her heartbeat became steady again. She breathed, in and out, and recalled something that Foggy had said in jest. "You break it, you bought it. I'm afraid that you're stuck with me."

"Good," Matt said, and he gave her one of those devastating half-smiles of his.

"Good," echoed Pax.

She got to her feet.


	4. monstrous

trigger warning for mention of child abuse, past abuse/trauma, animal death, and (non detailed) references to self harm

* * *

monstrous

* * *

Pax knocked on Claire's apartment door and waited for Claire to look through the peephole and unlock a trio of locks before she opened the door. When they were face to face Pax saw that Claire's hair was damp from a shower, curls waving around her face and neck, her cheeks still pinked from the heat.

"Hello Claire." Pax greeted the nurse.

"Hey Pax. Come on in." Claire said, stepping to the side so that Pax could enter. Pax pulled her boots off at the door and stood awkwardly. Claire walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

"Water? Coffee?" Claire asked. "That's about all I've got right now."

"Water, please." Pax said. She worked up her courage to move into the living room and sit down on the couch. As she waited for Claire she noted the old bloodstains that just wouldn't quite come out of the upholstery. Claire poured her a cup from a filtered pitcher and handed it to her, then sat on the opposite end of the couch. She turned her body to face Pax and rested her arm across the back. Pax took a small drink of water and set her glass down.

"I was glad you called. I was wondering how you were doing. I like the glasses. You look really different." Claire observed.

"I guess that was the idea," Pax said. She pulled off the black rimmed glasses off her face and folded them. "Although, PRISM's operations here were interrupted, and thanks to the MLF they are looking for me in England, so I suppose the disguise isn't necessary." Pax felt Claire's gaze following her bandaged fingers, and Pax felt unaccountably guilty.

"How are you adjusting?" Claire asked. "It must be so different."

"It is," Pax agreed. "I keep... I keep thinking this is another test."

"A test?" Claire asked, bending her arm to rest her head against her hand.

"Yes. In training they would test us. Once they released me outside of the base and set dogs on me, to see how far I could get. We were always to be ready to fight, day or night, so they would have us attack the other assets and be attacked by them, at any time. Eating, showering, sleeping. And once, early on in my training they gave each of the assets young dogs. It was a technique that another program had developed and found particularly effective at eliminating bonding behaviour."

"Oh my God," Claire said.

"We were to train them, and name them and bond with them, and once we had gotten emotionally attached they had us-" Claire saw the shaded, vacant look in Pax's eyes and raised her arms in front of her like a shield.

"Stop," Claire said, her heart hammering. Pax sensed her nausea, the depth of her repulsion, her disbelief. Pax regretted making Claire feel that way. She knew that she could take those feelings away for Claire, make her feel only good feelings (as far as telepathically inducing emotion, bliss was easy). But, as clueless as she was, even Pax was aware that people consider that sort of thing an invasion, so she banished the thought.

"I'm sorry." Pax said hesitantly. She looked down at the glasses in her hands.

Claire rubbed her hands over her face and sighed. "It's okay. I mean, it's not, it's so not okay. But I'm not angry with you."

"You're angry with PRISM?" Pax sought clarification.

"Yes," Claire insisted, "Yes I am. I'm angry at what they did to you. Aren't you?"

Pax didn't know what she was supposed to say. No one had ever asked or told her how to answer that question.

"I am just an asset. A mutant." Pax finally said, seeming confused.

Claire sat forward and pressed her hands together in front of her mouth, like she was praying. She closed her eyes.

"A little girl came into the ER last week. Her father had thrown her down a flight of stairs but he was sticking to his story that she had fallen by accident. It wasn't the first time she'd been in, and her legs and arms were just one big mess of bruises. But my supervisor wasn't sure-" Claire's voice broke, but she continued. "She wasn't sure if we should even treat this little girl, let alone report it to Child Protective Services. Because she had skin that glowed like a nightlight in the dark. Did that little girl not deserve to be protected? To be loved?"

Pax was silent, absorbing Claire's story, watching the memories play out in the front of Claire's mind as she spoke. Claire opened her eyes and turned back to Pax, searching the young woman's face for any clue to what she was feeling.

"I don't know if I feel angry. At least, not about that." Pax finally said. "When I think about PRISM, about what they did to us, I feel... Cold. Like I'm deep underneath dark water, like I'll never see the sun again. I feel ice, splintered shards of it, right here."

Pax pressed her hand to the centre of her chest. "And I want to destroy every person who ever had a hand in what PRISM did to me." She finished darkly.

Claire nodded and brushed her hair across her neck so that the dark waves fell over her shoulder. "These Russian dicks hurt me once. Pretty bad. This one in particularly- he was the one who kept hitting me- he wanted me to tell him Matt's name. At the time I didn't even know it. They were going to kill me."

"Matt saved you," Pax said, understanding.

"Yes, he did." Claire said. She bit her lip and smiled sadly, like it was the only thing holding back a sob. "And I got a good hit in, myself. And after that I was so afraid. I still am. But I was even angrier than I was scared. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to hurt someone. I dreamed about killing the guy who gave the order to have me beat up. And I'm a nurse!"

Claire laughed mirthlessly.

"My point is, there isn't any right or wrong way to feel after trauma. Our feelings don't always make sense, or look like how someone else would feel. If you're sad, you're sad. If you're angry, you're angry. And having monstrous feelings doesn't make you a monster."

"But doing monstrous things does." Pax thought of her acts of monstrosity, as numberless as the stars in the sky. "I've- I've not just dreamed about it. I have hurt people."

"We're all a mix of good and bad. You can't change what's happened or what you've done, but you can decide what you're going to be from now on." Claire said gently. "And whatever you did- it wasn't your fault. You were just a child. It wasn't your fault."

Wasn't it? Pax clenched her bandaged fingers into fists. Pinpricks of pain bloomed underneath her fingers and a line of scarlet began to leak through the snowy bandaging over her palm. The more time she spent in the world, speaking with good people, the more lost she felt. Was she sure of anything anymore?

"Thank you, Claire." Claire, from the Latin, meaning bright, clear. Looking into Claire's dark eyes, beautiful and shadowy with sympathy, but so clear and so cutting, Pax thought the name was fitting. She even thought that she might understand why Matt loved this woman.


	5. self expressions

self expressions

* * *

Foggy was at the drugstore, picking up refills of everything for the medical kit at his place (Matt and Pax used up a lot of bandages between the both of them) when he saw the sale sign. Three for three dollars, the sign said. Foggy shuffled his armful of medical supplies to peer into the bin. An involuntary smile tugged at his lips.

Fond memories of his high school experience floated to the surface. It wasn't a totally unpleasant journey, but no walk in the park either, not for guys like him. But it was the also the time he found himself. He missed the feeling of invincibility that you got with youth. Nothing could touch him then, not really. He could always rebound. And then he smiled when he remembered the first time he painted his nails and wore what he wanted.

Well, the first time as a young adult. He and his sisters did it all the time when he was little. Foggy's family was big, and open, and a little brash, but god, did they love big. No one cared about tiny Foggy running around the house in stripey-witch tights, a ninja mask, a pair of pumpkin orange shorts, and purple sparkly nail polish. Happiness was most important.

But external influences crept in- they always do. The outside world was bigger than his big family, and loved less, and conditionally. He got tired of explaining to his peers that no, this wasn't a girl's lunchbox, it was _his_ , and that boys and girls could play with whatever they wanted, that toys had no rules. He got tired of watching Saturday morning cartoons where boys wearing dresses were the cruel punchline. He got tired of defending. So he stopped.

Until high school, when he started hanging out with this trio of girls who knew how to love each other. They loved each other with kisses and shared joints still warm from the others' mouths and the gifting of riot grrrl poetry. And they saw Foggy for who he was and pulled him in.

Tess and Amy taught him how to ring his eyes with liner in that way that was a little bit grunge and a lotta bit hot. Tana taught him about nail polish, about how to apply it in three short, smooth strokes. About how to wave his hands so they'd dry and pick things up clumsily between his palms, like a seal doing tricks, while they were still wet. About how different colours meant different things (it was psychology, see) and about how colours could influence your mood.

So Foggy wore green on days when he felt lucky or fey, red when he felt confident (or needed too), and purple when he was proud of who he was. He wore shiny gold for luck during the SATs, black to shows on the weekend and to go out dancing with his friends. And when people told him he couldn't wear makeup, he wore the brightest, most electric blue he could find, a beautiful "fuck you". He liked looking down at his hands and seeing a bit of blue sky, or the exact colour of the classic car that Foggy helped his dad restore, or little bits of a sunset.

Why had he stopped? Professionalism at work played a part, he guessed. Landman & Zack had been a black hole of creativity and self expression. But he missed it. And he was his own boss now. Who set the dress code, if not him? Before he could think better of it, Foggy scooped up three different colours and grabbed a bottle of nail polish remover. He hurried to pay and then rushed home with his surprise.

Pax was at his place that night (his and Matt's joint custody of the mutant was always funny to him). Foggy found her in the living room, lying on her stomach on the floor. She was writing in a spiral notebook. As he came bustling in she looked up whatever she was doing, eyebrows raised in curiosity.

"Guess what I got!" Foggy said. "Well, you probably already know, since I'm thinking about it. Okay, I'll just show you." He pulled out the polishes and set them on the coffee table. Pax rolled over and sat up to get a better look, intrigued. She picked up a pretty amethyst colour and gave the bottle an experimental shake.

"I was thinking of going with this one," Foggy said, showing her a different bottle. "Want to do it together?"

"I don't know how to," Pax admitted.

"I'll show you," Foggy said. "It's all about short, quick strokes."

Matt dropped by later, when Foggy was finished his own nails (a friendly, but work appropriate navy blue) and was doing Pax's toes. Pax was trying to clean up the smears of purple around her cuticles, and the whole place smelled of acetone. Matt's reaction upon opening the door and getting hit with the fumes made Foggy seriously worry that he just managed to kill the Daredevil. With nail polish remover.

Pax opened all the windows as Foggy fussed over his best friend, and once Matt had collapsed onto the sofa and finished coughing up a lung, their initial roommate days came flooding back to Foggy now. Ah yes. This is exactly why he had quit with the nail polish in the first place.

"Sorry Matt," Foggy apologized for the dozenth time. "I didn't know you were coming."

"It's fine," Matt said, eyes still watering a bit. He cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just never do that around me. Ever."

"You got it, buddy. I have to say though, we look pretty good." Foggy raised his hand to Pax, who gave him a hesitant high-five in return.

"Oh yeah? Let me see." Matt said, in that kind of teasing way he had, but like he really did care. Matty was good that way. Pax and Foggy stood in front of him and both held out a hand for inspection. Matt took one of theirs in each of his warm hands. He ran his thumbs along the slick, newly hardened polish.

"Looks great. I like the colour." Matt joked, and he smiled up at his friends. Foggy grinned his hundred watt smile at Matt, and then at Pax, whom he could have sworn was blushing with pleasure. That suited Foggy just fine. After all, happiness is most important.

* * *

Thank you for reading this fic about genderqueer Foggy and his friends.


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